


at the top of our love

by myrmidryad



Category: X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Asexual Character, Developing Relationship, Foursome - M/M/M/M, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Polyamory, Recreational Drug Use, Threesome - M/M/M, and Sean never died, break ups, if that makes sense, kinda - Armando comes back after the events of dofp, to clarify - none of the non-con happens between the characters in this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-01
Updated: 2014-07-01
Packaged: 2018-02-07 02:00:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1880850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myrmidryad/pseuds/myrmidryad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How Alex, Hank, and Sean come together after Cuba, separate, and are eventually joined by Armando. A relationship in various stages of evolution.</p>
            </blockquote>





	at the top of our love

**Author's Note:**

> Title from [Damn Things Over](http://music.weareempires.com/track/damn-things-over-2) by Empires.
> 
> So I was rewatching XMFC and livetweeting the experience, which led to [this gem](https://twitter.com/summerofIike/status/481106711642918914), which means I'm totally crediting Keshia with the spark of inspiration that started this.
> 
> I wrote this in about two days while listening to the Bang EP by Empires on endless repeat, which is down to Aiden making [a Stucky fanmix made entirely of Empires songs](http://icarus.co.vu/post/87827971900/i-am-just-your-ghost-by-design-i-forgot-you). [Intruder](http://music.weareempires.com/track/intruder-2) and [Damn Things Over](http://music.weareempires.com/track/damn-things-over-2) are best for this fic, I think.

Alex isn’t sure which one of them is more fucked up in the weeks and months after Cuba. Sean spends hours outside, screaming himself hoarse as he practises flying. From the garden, Alex watches him soar up to a height almost beyond seeing, then drop until Alex is sure he’s going to die, body turning over slowly as it careens towards the ground and inevitable death.

At the last moment, Sean screams loud enough to make Alex cry out in pain, and shoots up and away again. Inside, Hank hurls a table across a room, ears too sensitive to take Banshee’s screams. The professor has ideas for the bunkers under the mansion – a refurbishment of sorts. He and Hank are drafting blueprints, making plans, building a new Cerebro to find more students.

More cannon fodder? Or just more voices so Charles won’t feel so lonely?

Alex concentrates on controlling his power without Hank’s help, burning the inside of the bunkers black. He gets Darwin’s address from Hank and heads for New York.

Armando Muñoz’s mother is black, his father Latino, his two younger sisters and two younger brothers wide-eyed and silent. One of the boys gives Alex a hate-filled glare he knows he deserves. Charles sent them a letter, but there wasn’t time for a visit. Alex makes the time now. After all – Darwin’s death was his fault. With no impending threat of world war three to distract them, he’s had plenty of time for reflection on the truth of the matter.

He handed Shaw the power to kill Darwin on a plate. He might as well have shot his energy blasts at Darwin himself and cut out the middle man. It was his fault. It will always be his fault.

 

For all his talk of not abusing powers, Charles is free with using his powers to ensure their concealment. The company contracted to work on the refurbishment of the mansion has their records wiped the moment the job is done, the workers’ memories erased, the whole thing blinked out of existence in a matter of seconds.

Sean lounges on the roof, makeshift bong at his side, and blows smoke into the air. The sky is pink and orange, sunset hidden behind the trees, and he’s bored and tired and bored and tired and bored and tired.

Bored enough to want to screw with things a little. Too tired to act on the desire. Is it exhaustion or laziness? He’s been tired since Cuba. He misses Angel and Raven.

Angel wouldn’t be able to touch him now, if they fought again. He’s too good. Flying’s the only thing he’s ever really been good at.

The door behind him opens, and Alex’s voice is the one that comes out. “Oh. Sorry, man, I didn’t know you were…is that a bong?”

“It’s a bottle with a tube in it, and you can’t prove a thing,” Sean mumbles, lying down and tilting his head back to look at Alex. “Want some?” Like hell will he.

Alex sighs. “Yeah, sure.”

“Yeah?” Sean rolls over, spine twisted, and grins. “Take a seat, my man.”

Alex has destroyed public property, injured multiple people, been to prison, been in solitary confinement. He’s clearly never smoked so much as a cigarette, and Sean giggles himself breathless as Alex hacks and coughs, face red and scowling. “Shut up!”

Sean mimes zipping his lips and pillows his head on Alex’s thigh and God, it’s nice. He wants to crawl into Alex’s lap and touch as much of him as possible, curl up in his arms and cry into his shoulder. It’d be nice to cry on someone. As it is, he just turns his face into Alex’s trousers and hums, eyes falling closed. It feels like his body is tilted at an angle, legs suspended above him. Alex’s leg is so warm.

 

Charles is a wealth of information, and since almost nothing fazes him, Hank can question him at will. The opportunities are literally endless. Charles tells him that people are so, so much more than what they present; something Hank always knew but could never prove.

Normal people are into all sorts of weird shit. Hank imagines the surveys, the data, the graphs. Psychology has always appealed to him, but the unreliable data is too much of a deterrent. There’s so much he would never be able to ask, and so much more people would simply refuse to answer or lie about. Charles lifts the veil on all of those deceptions.

They redesign the mansion together, and Hank knows Charles knows he knows that this is just a big distraction technique. He’s had his suspicions, and Charles quietly affirms them one night in his study. He and Erik were more than their joint leaders, more than friends, closer than that.

“You…” Hank trails off, not sure whether to say _love him_ or _loved him_. Charles looks down, pained, and that’s all the answer Hank requires.

Another night, Charles catches him looking at a framed photograph of him and Raven together in England somewhere. “Oxford,” Charles tells him. Hank keeps looking to his side and then down, and wonders how long it will take before looking down becomes the norm. “We were in Oxford. You miss her.”

“So do you.”

“You were growing close to her when she left.”

Hank blushes, the sudden shame worse for its abrupt appearance. Charles reaches up and pats his back (he would’ve squeezed Hank’s shoulder before). “You’re not the only one, you know,” Charles says mildly.

“What?” Charles’ mind tracks others so quickly, it’s difficult for Hank to follow sometimes. “The only one getting close to Raven?”

“No.” Charles wheels backwards and away, and Hank follows him down the hall. “The only one who doesn’t experience sexual attraction.”

“I don’t…” _Understand_ , Hank wants to whisper.

“You’ve researched the phenomenon in the animal kingdom – you know it’s not abnormal, and I’m simply confirming that.”

These revelations are still a shock, and Hank’s grateful when Charles pauses by a chair in the hall so that he can sit down (or is it selfish wish on Charles’ part that they both be at eye-level? Does it matter?). “You’re sure?”

Charles smiles, just a small movement of his lips. “I couldn’t be positive without deeply reading the minds of a significant portion of the population, but from what I’ve overheard during my lifetime, I can tell you that it’s rare, but there’s nothing wrong with you, or any of the others who feel the way you do.”

They’ve had this conversation before, discussing the things that are believed to be sicknesses and aberrations – homosexuality being just one. Hank often wonders how much the world would benefit if everyone was a telepath. It’s still a relief to hear that he’s not alone. There’s nothing wrong with him.

“There’s nothing wrong with you at all.” Charles tells him, taking his hands to squeeze them. Something about Hank’s thoughts have triggered something – Charles is on the edge of tears, and as soon as he feels Hank’s mind querying it, Charles lets go and pushes himself away. Hank doesn’t have to be a telepath to know that he doesn’t want company.

 

Sean goes into town with two specific goals in mind: buying beer, and buying pot. He returns triumphant, and drags Alex and Hank up onto the roof to get drunk and high with him. He and Alex have a routine by this point. Alex won’t always smoke with him, but he’ll let Sean use him as a pillow. With beer, it gets even better. Sean gets the feeling that Alex is using him to make some sort of point to Hank, but if it means he keeps getting petted like this, he won’t complain.

“You’re like a cat or something,” Hank mutters. Sean’s head and shoulders are in Alex’s lap, Alex’s fingers sure and gentle in his hair, against his scalp.

“I could purr,” Sean smirks, arching his back and humming when Alex’ knuckles trail down his neck. It’s bliss, but he jolts upright anyway and crawls over to collapse in Hank’s lap anyway. “Feeling lonely?” he grins, looking up into Hank’s shocked face. “Whoa, your eyes are so fuckin yellow. Do they glow in the dark?”

“You’re high.” Hank deadpans.

“You’re not drunk enough,” Alex tells him, passing over another beer. “Come on.”

Sean bought more than they can drink in one night (unless they’re feeling really ambitious), and he drinks up as well. Hank’s fur feels great against his skin, he finds out, when Hank gets over his nerves enough to play with his hair the way Alex usually does. “Tha’s nice,” he mumbles when Hank scratches experimentally. “Keep doin’ that.”

“Yes, sir.” Hank probably wants to sound dry, but he sounds a little nervous as well, and Sean screws up his face and laughs, finally relaxed and happy now they’re both close, both of them leaning over him and sharing a joint above him. Ash drops onto his shirt and he doesn’t even care because they’re all so close, and even though the sun’s going down he’s warm warm warm.

 

They move the party downstairs into the attic. Sean produces a record player from somewhere, and Hank has records, and Alex dances and drinks. They go outside to piss over the side of the roof, all of them giggling and reckless. Sean pulls him into a hug when they go back inside and puts _Let’s Twist Again_ on. When Alex groans, the other two just dance around him until he joins in, feeling like an idiot until Hank falls over and lies on his back laughing.

Sean just shakes his ass and grins, spinning circles and somehow staying on his feet. Alex lies down next to Hank and presses his face into his furry blue neck to hide the way he suddenly wants to cry. Darwin should be here. “Why isn’t Darwin here?” he slurs, eyes stinging.

Sean sits on top of him and grabs his face, forcing him to look up. “It wasn’t your fault,” he says. It comes out in his perpetual drawl as, “I’wasn’y’r’faul’,” but Alex understands him perfectly. He starts to cry, his whole face crumpling and his chest heaving, both of them pulling him up to sit. He sobs into Hank’s shoulder with Sean’s face pressed against the back of his neck and clings onto both of them.

He hasn’t cried like this since the night he realised he was going to jail.

 

New students appear and start to fill the newly fitted rooms and dormitories. Charles is vitalised, teaching every moment of the day. Hank learns how to break his knowledge down into lessons, and a woman Charles finds joins them and tells them to call her Sage. She teaches everything he and Charles don’t, and Alex and Sean skulk around trying to do what they can but mostly hiding and getting high on the roof.

It’s exhausting, but exhilarating. They’re taking it day by day with no idea what they’re doing, but they’re really doing this. Hank knows that Charles just wishes Raven and Erik were here – that’s the only thing that would make this venture even better. They’re the missing ingredients. Erik’s hands-on teaching methods and Raven’s fierce confidence. She could lead the new students. She would know what to say.

Hank sees them stare at his fur and eyes and fangs and feels their eyes on him when his back is turned. In his lab, he works on a serum to reverse his stupid mistake. “I don’t want to look like this,” he admits to Alex and Sean in the attic. The weather’s turned cold now, and they’ve taken to finding each other in there instead of on the roof. Sean keeps the beer up there and the whole attic is out of bounds to the students.

“I still think you look awesome,” Alex shrugs. Hank just shakes his head.

“I still feel like a freak.”

“Could be worse.” Sean’s slurring on the floor – he’s taken something extra tonight, Hank’s pretty sure, but he won’t ask. They’ve all had a bit too much to drink already. “Could be fucked in the head like me. Someone hug me,” he adds, whining, arms out and beseeching. Alex rolls his eyes, but Hank sees him smile when he goes over to sit in the armchair behind Sean. It’s nice to be needed, even for something as small as physical touch. He likes watching them together – it’s why he started going up to the roof once he found out they got high up there together.

Sean presses himself into Alex like he craves the contact, and Alex gets fistfuls of his ginger curls and tugs and pulls. It looks like it should hurt, but Sean’s eyes roll back in his head. “Fuck yeah,” he breathes, pulling Alex’s leg against his chest and hugging it tight.

“Masochism,” Hank says, voice a little rough. “Feeling pain as pleasurable.”

Sean grins, lazy and satisfied. “You’re so fuckin smart. Not like us, right, Alex?”

“Speak for yourself.” Alex yanks hard and Sean’s head jerks with the movement. His eyes flutter shut, his breath visibly catching. Alex laughs and strokes his fingers against his scalp, gentle now. “You totally get off on this.”

“I’d do it to you, but you’re practically bald,” Sean mumbles and turns his face against Alex’s knee. Hank watches in silence, something in him captivated by the way Sean’s expression turns desperate. He drags his cheek against Alex’s thigh, and when Hank looks, Alex’s smile is gone.

Legs spread, Sean between his knees, Alex is clearly coming to his senses. Sean doesn’t notice, biting at the material he can get in his mouth, twisting in place so he can mouth further up the inside of Alex’s thigh. Alex is about to panic, and Hank leans forward. The movement catches Alex’s attention and he stays where he is while their eyes meet.

“It’s kind of funny,” Hank says, voice a quiet rumble (it didn’t used to have this growling quality before, but he’ll fix that). “The sorts of things people think are really abnormal and twisted when in actuality they’re perfectly normal.”

Alex takes a moment to reply, because Sean has turned completely around – Hank can’t see what he’s doing exactly, but his head is right between Alex’s thighs now. “What sort of things?” Alex manages to say, admirably steady. Sean makes a frustrated moaning sound and pulls Alex’s pants, and Hank’s heart jumps when Alex allows himself to be dragged forward to the edge of the armchair. They make such a beautiful picture.

“All sorts of things,” Hank says, not wanting to blink in case he misses anything. Sean’s hands fumble at Alex’s crotch, and after a second, Alex’s join them to help. “What we’re doing now is far more commonplace than people know.”

“Yeah?” Alex gasps and grips the arms of the chair when Sean yanks his pants and underwear down to his knees. Hank only catches a glimpse of Alex’s cock, hard and heavy, before Sean’s moaning around it, lips so, so red.

“You should pull his hair.” Hank can’t believe how he’s managing to stay calm, but Alex holds his gaze and moves one hand from the arm of the chair to Sean’s head. “It’s okay.”

“Is it?” Alex is close to panicking, even as he chokes back whimpers Hank’s sensitive ears can just pick up.

“It is.” Hank gets up as Sean does something that makes Alex throw his head back and hiss. Hank drags a rickety chair over and sits close enough to put one hand on Sean’s shoulder and grip Alex’s upper arm with the other. Alex’s pupils are huge, and from this angle Hank can see Sean’s face. His eyes are closed, eyebrows tilted in an expression of desperation. He bobs his head rhythmically, lips stretched and wet around Alex’s cock. “I promise it is.”

Alex squeezes his eyes shut and gasps and gasps, chin trembling and muscles tense. Hank slides the hand on Sean’s shoulder into his hair and pulls, because Alex’s has gone slack. Sean makes a small sound, unable to moan properly with Alex’s cock halfway down his throat. It’s encouragement though, so Hank keeps pulling, tugging, little strands and whole handfuls. Sean’s making high noises whenever he pulls back now, one hand between his legs.

“You look incredible,” Hank breathes, full of wonderment at what he’s being allowed to witness. Alex shudders, and Hank squeezes his arm. “I’d kiss you if I wasn’t covered in fur.”

“I don’t care,” Alex says, voice cracked and eyes still closed. “Beast, I don’t care –”

Hank moves his hand from Alex’s arm to the back of his neck and leans forward to kiss him. Alex kisses like no one else he’s ever kissed before; sure and almost savage, sloppy and biting. All at once he cries out and wrenches away, head flung back and neck bared as he comes. Sean doesn’t pull away even after Alex is finished, hand moving fast out of sight. When he comes a few seconds later he lets Alex’s cock slip from his mouth and cries out silently, mouth open and eyes rolling back in his head.

Hank’s not even hard, but he’s got goosebumps, and he’d do anything to kiss Alex again. Fear and uncertainty hit him like bullets – is he welcome here at all? This was between Sean and Alex. They didn’t ask for him to impose himself on this the way he has.

Sean slides sideways to lie down and curls up, eyes still closed. He looks suddenly childlike, and Hank gets up in one fluid movement and reaches for another beer.

“What the fuck?” Alex says to the general universe.

 

The number of times Sean’s pretended to fall asleep in order to get out of awkward situations is embarrassingly high, but to be fair, he did just suck Alex off in front of Hank. Awkward isn’t quite the word anymore. He passed awkward somewhere around the point where he started pulling at Alex’s pants. He’s so, so fucked.

The floor is spinning under him, tilting up so he should be sliding down to crash against the wall. Through the wall, out the side of the mansion, he could scream and fly and leave leave run away and hide. What has he _done?_

He’s so fucked. He’s so fucked _up_.

“Sean?” Hank’s trying to be soft, but his voice is a growl that makes Sean curl up tighter and then push himself to his knees, face burning as he tucks himself back into his pants. His come is on the front of the armchair, and his jaw aches. (It feels so good, and some stupid part of him wonders whether Hank has fur on his cock.)

“You okay, man?” Alex is still in the chair (which Sean will never be able to look at again), and Sean sucks in a deep breath.

Act sober, act sober, act sober. He’s good at that. The trick to standing when he’s like this is to take it real slow.

“M’sorry,” he mumbles, pushing himself up and pulling his hair forward to hide his face. The tug, self-inflicted though it is, reminds him of their hands in his hair. He clenches his jaw to stop his chin trembling. “Sorry, m’s’rry, I didn’t…” He did mean it, he did want it, he still does because he is _so fucked up_ and now they _know_.

They know.

“Sean, it’s okay.” Hank’s behind him, and Sean turns to keep him in sight, too edgy to have people at his back. “It’s okay. Right, Alex?”

Alex just stares, and Sean mourns what he should never have taken for granted – Alex’s friendship, his company, his laughter and his hands in Sean’s hair, thighs under Sean’s cheeks. He’s thrown all that away.

_Sean?_

Sean’s composure shatters and he reels away from them. The professor is a telepath and Sean has been so incredibly stupid, how could he have thought he could hide this from a telepath?

_Sean, could you come downstairs for a moment, please? Thank you._

“What’s the matter?” Alex is standing, zipping his pants. Sean avoids his outstretched hand and goes to the door.

“It’s the professor,” he mutters on the way, voice rough. He can’t bring himself to say goodbye or look back. He doesn’t want to see their faces.

Charles is waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs, hands on the wheels of his chair. “Sean, you sounded upset,” he says as Sean takes the steps slowly, hand white-knuckled on the banister. “I don’t mean to pry but you…” He trails off and his eyes widen.

Sean’s trying to keep his mind blank, but the beer and drugs are making that trickier than usual, and the memories are so fresh in his mind. He can’t keep them from the professor, and he sinks down to sit on the stairs throat thick and eyes burning. “M’sorry,” he chokes, his jaw trembling. “Please, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please don’t send me away, I’ll never do it again, I’m sorry…”

Their hands in his hair, the glorious tingling pull, the pain so good. Alex’s pants down, the size of him in Sean’s mouth, the need to whimper and cry and moan even when he couldn’t. Hank’s eyes on him, his hushed voice – “You look incredible.” – his claws on the back of Sean’s neck. His own hand in his pants, thrusting his hips and imagining nothing because what had happened was a fantasy come true for him.

He can’t stop the professor seeing everything, and Sean starts to shake, crying into his hands and mumbling apologies and pleas. “I don’t have anywhere else to go,” he croaks. “Please, I’m sorry, don’t make me go, please –”

Waves of calm wash through him, and he slumps against the banister. He wants nothing more than to sleep forever and forget this ever happened.

Charles reaches for him and takes one of his hands, and his mind opens. Sean gasps as he’s allowed to experience parts of what the professor’s seen and heard and done. Minds around his, more minds than Sean would have ever believed, minds _like_ his. Thinking things Sean can’t believe –

_Charles walking past a building in England and hearing two women working each other to ecstasy, their happiness spilling down the street and making Charles blush._

_A club Charles knew in London, another in Oxford, a club for gentlemen who preferred the company of men…_

_Men kissing each other in corners, laughing together and relaxing together, a blonde British man buying a drink for Charles and smiling._

_Sage’s mind, her open desire for men and women alike, her laugh at Charles’ tentative approach for friendship._

_Erik –_

Charles pulls away before Sean sees more than a glimpse of Erik, but the feeling of longing and pain and desire that came with the image tells him more than enough. “You?” He blinks, eyelashes wet and clumped, and Charles smiles, sad and pleased at once.

“More people than you know. It’s not a disease, or anything of the sort. You should ask Hank about it – he knows as much, if not more than I do.” He pauses. “You said your parents had made you leave, but it wasn’t for your mutation, was it?”

Sean shakes his head, shame showing in his flushed face. Charles doesn’t push, just squeezes his knee. “Go to bed, Sean. Sleep off…whatever you’ve taken.”

He hides in his bedroom and curls up under the blankets to cry into his pillow. When he finally stops, he’s wrung-out and exhausted, but not quite as scared as before.

 

“My power isn’t the only reason I liked solitary,” Alex tells Hank. They’re in the attic, waiting for Sean to come back from flying. Every so often they’ll catch the edge of one of his shrieks.

“What do you mean?” Hank frowns. He’s started experimenting with his newest suppression serum, and he’s shedding fur everywhere, the armchair he’s sitting in covered in blue fuzz.

“I mean there aren’t any women in prison,” Alex says flatly. “And apparently I’m pretty.”

“You are good looking,” Hank agrees, then stares at him. “They wanted…”

“They would’ve.” Alex has never been so grateful for his powers in his life. Solitary was a small price to pay for avoiding men like that. They didn’t get more than a hand on him before he forced them back, but he still has nightmares about it sometimes. Nightmares where he doesn’t have his powers and he’s easily held down, his clothes ripped off, body exposed for them.

“Sean’s nothing like that,” Hank says sharply, and Alex nods.

“I know.” Sean couldn’t be less like those men if he tried. “I’ve just always…you know, associated this sort of thing with prison. And creepy old men, y’know?”

“Propaganda,” Hank sniffs. “Charles has listened to hundreds of thousands of minds. It’s not hard evidence, but it’s as good as, in my opinion. We’re perfectly normal. And this behaviour isn’t limited to humans – there have been plenty of recorded instances of normalised homosexuality in the animal kingdom. It doesn’t get more natural than that.”

“Animals also piss on their territory and throw shit at each other,” Alex grunts, glancing at The Armchair (as he’s started calling it). “They’re not exactly role models. Besides, okay, what about you then?”

Hank’s saved from replying by a thud on the roof – Sean landing. They’re both quiet, and after a few seconds the door at the top of the last staircase in the house opens and Sean tumbles inside. His hair’s stiff and wild from the wind, nose bright red from the cold. He stops dead when he sees them.

Alex looks at Hank. “What about you then?” he asks again. “You just watched.”

“I’m different.” Hank looks down, lacing his fingers together on his knees. His nails are human now, not claws – the serum is working, slowly. Sean watches in silence.

“Different how?” Alex stretches his legs out in front of him. If Sean wants to leave, he’ll have to walk between Alex and Hank or climb over the cluttered furniture by the wall. Alex hopes he’ll stay. (The Armchair is one of the free seats, and Alex has spent so long replaying what Sean did to him that he wouldn’t be averse to repaying the favour if allowed.)

Hank glances between them and licks his lips. “If you would be considered homosexual,” he says slowly, “I suppose I would be nonsexual.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Sean finally speaks, but doesn’t sit.

“I don’t…it’s hard to explain.” Hank sighs and scratches his head – blue fur falls to the ground. “You get sexual urges, right? I don’t. I still like people, romantically, but I just don’t want…you know. The sex part of it.”

“What, at all?” Alex can’t imagine not wanting sex.

Hank shrugs, embarrassed. “Not really. I mean, I’m interested from a theoretical and scientific point of view, but I’m not…I don’t really get the urge to act on it.”

“Lucky you.” Sean sits on the floor where he is and crosses his legs.

“This isn’t bad,” Hank tells them, utterly certain. “We’re not sick or messed up or anything like that. It’s all okay.”

He said something like that the night of the Armchair, Alex remembers, and abruptly remembers Darwin’s hand on his stomach in front of the pinball machine. Darwin’s laugh, his arms spread over them as they crouched in terror at Shaw’s approach, his easy smile and friendly eyes. What would Darwin think of all this?

What does it matter? Darwin’s dead.

“We’re freaks already,” he hears himself say, and looks at Sean, who pulls his knees up to his chest and stares into empty air.

“The professor told me it was okay,” he says very quietly.

“It is,” Hank says. Alex gets to his feet and stretches.

“Fuck this. Is there any beer left?”

They squash onto a two-person couch, Alex in the middle, and Sean gets them high. Hank’s hand settles on the back of Alex’s neck (would Darwin’s hand feel like that?) and Sean’s head falls against his shoulder (soft curls so different to Darwin’s afro). Their legs tangle, ankles locking together and feet rubbing, and all Alex needs to do is turn his head to the left. Hank’s there, fangs almost gone, and his lips are soft.

Sean stretches across both their laps and mumbles things Alex can’t hear into Hank’s leg. He rolls off after a while, and Alex gets up to make sure he doesn’t leave. “Wait.” His mind is fuzzy, everything a little bit sharp and a little bit slow, and that’s when Sean kisses his forehead, their bodies bumping together.

They’re both taller than him – Hank rises to stand behind him and hold him steady as Sean kisses his forehead again, again, moving sideways and down. Alex tilts his face and waits with eyes half-closed as Sean strokes his hair and rubs his thumb against Alex’s jaw, taking his time. Only Hank’s hands firm on Alex’s hips keep him from losing his mind as Sean avoids his mouth, kissing everywhere but. When his lips press hot to Alex’s throat, Alex groans.

Sean’s hands settle above Hank’s, warm on Alex’s waist through his shirt. Both of them keep him still as Sean presses their bodies together from knee to chest and _still_ doesn’t kiss him. Alex refuses to ask, especially since at this point it would be more like begging. Hank follows Sean’s lead, and Alex shivers as he finds himself caught between two bodies, held and suspended. He’s hard, and he’s barely been touched. He knows they can both feel his unsteady breathing, and that realisation makes heat flare in the pit of his stomach, his hands finding Sean’s shoulders and squeezing hard.

Sean makes a soft sound. Their noses brush as he kisses the corner of Alex’s open mouth, and they both moan when their lips finally meet. Hank’s breath is on Alex’s neck, Sean’s tongue against his, and Alex feels like he’s floating.

 

By December, Hank’s got his serum perfected. He’ll take a normal face and body over super speed and hanging upside-down any day. They’re all effectively broke, so for Christmas presents Sean suggests they gift themselves. “Wrap me up in paper with a bow on top,” he grins lazily, head in Hank’s lap. “You can open me together.”

“And who’ll unwrap us?” Hank plays with his hair and exchanges an amused smile with Alex.

“We could take turns?” Sean tilts his head to kiss the heel of Hank’s hand. Of the three of them, he’s definitely freest with physical affection, though Alex has been getting bolder.

“You’re talking about Christmas like it’s the big deal here,” Alex says, voice so much deeper than either of theirs. “We should be talking about New Year. Who’s gonna supervise the kiddies so we can get trashed?”

“Some of them are as old as you,” Hank reminds him. Alex waves it off, as always. They’re the oldest students there, though Hank is more of a teacher. They’ve found their niches now, thank God. Alex organises games and sports, both powered and non-powered. Sean takes care of inventory – he’s got a surprisingly good head for numbers, and if he siphons off a little of the budget for his personal uses, Charles is kind enough to turn a blind eye.

“None of them are as sexy.” Alex grins, and Sean snickers.

“Not the point,” Hank smiles.

“You’re not denying it.” Sean reaches up to tug a lock of his hair and laughs, and Hank has to lean down to kiss him. He kisses, and watches, and talks, but it’s Sean and Alex who get each other off.

On New Year, they egg each other on until they’re all stark naked, pissing over the edge of the mansion and shivering when they come back inside. They huddle together for warmth, blankets spread out on the floor and the record player warbling the Everly Brothers. Of course they start kissing, and Hank falls back with them when Sean and Alex start to touch each other with more daring.

Always more sober, Hank touches them both, watches and marvels and occasionally guides. He knows a little more than either of them about the practicalities of where they’re moving, and knows all they’ve got on their side is spit. He doesn’t think it’ll be enough, but Sean and Alex seem happy enough just rutting against each other. Alex gasps, shoulders golden and shaking, his mouth pressed to Sean’s neck. Sean keens when Hank gets a fistful of his hair and pulls his head back to bare his neck for Alex’s teeth, and the three of them work so well like this.

Sean is always silent until one of them pulls his hair or scratches his skin hard enough to leave marks, and then he’ll lose himself and whine, whimper, always high-pitched with his eyes screwed shut. He thrusts up against Alex and cries out when Alex sucks above his collarbone. When his lips come away, they leave a livid red mark, and Hank laughs, lying beside them with one hand tight in Sean’s hair and the other on the small of Alex’s back, urging him on.

Alex is losing himself as well now, eyes rolling and gasping, “Ah-ah-ah,” on each thrust. They’re both wound so tight, Hank can’t look away, waiting for the moment when they’ll snap. Sean comes first, writhing and bucking slowing to a frozen stop, legs locked around Alex’s and head thrown back so far his neck and back arches from the force. Alex keeps thrusting, desperate and focused, and when Sean starts to shift again Hank presses Alex down to increase the weight of his movements. It works, and Alex comes with a bitten-off cry, hiding his face against Sean’s shoulder.

They’re beautiful, and Hank lets Sean pull him closer, Alex moving to lie on top of both of them and pant into the gap between their necks.

“Happy New Year,” Sean drawls, laughing and loose-limbed, one hand stroking Alex’s back.

Hank cranes his neck to check the clock. “Not for another ten minutes.”

“Guess we’ll have to go again then,” Alex mutters, and they all start laughing, stifling the sound against each other’s skin.

 

Sean flies in circles and brings newspapers back to the mansion. They’re devoured by the students, and Charles has to force down conflicts that break out over the Civil Rights Movement and the rising threat of war in Vietnam. Despite his attempts to keep everyone safe and concealed, a group of students still manage to sneak out (after screwing around with Cerebro enough to make sure Charles won’t be able to find them until Hank fixes it) and go to Washington for some march or another.

Sean doesn’t like reading the newspapers or watching the reports on the TV – it’s too depressing. But the students return filthy and ecstatic, enamoured with Martin Luther King Jr. Sean hides up in the attic and drags Alex and Hank up there with him as often as he can. Hank’s always been the busiest of the three of them, but lately Alex has been reading and watching everything he can get his hands on, talking about equality and civil rights and Jim Crow.

It’s not that Sean wants to bury his head in the sand, but he doesn’t get these problems the way other people do. He prefers to lie on the roof and smoke, or soar high over the mansion and let himself freefall for the thrill and terror of it, seeing how close he can get to the ground before he needs to scream himself up again.

He screws up one day and ends up hurling himself at breakneck speed into a tree. He’s unconscious for almost two days, and when he wakes up Hank has to stop Alex from strangling him. “What the fuck were you thinking?” he demands. Sean blinks at him and sighs, shrugs his aching shoulders. (In the mirror later, he’s hard-pressed to find a piece of him that isn’t bruised or cut.)

He’s always thrown himself into stupid situations and thought himself in circles about the hideous state of the world they’ve been born into. He wonders sometimes what the point of living is. Why bother existing at all? He can’t offer anything, and he has no ambition to be anything great. To be anything at all.

Alex crawls into bed with him that night and presses kisses to Sean’s face. His fingers are gentler than they’ve ever been before, carding through Sean’s hair and fluttering against his bruised neck and chest. _Please be careful_ , Alex says with everything except his mouth. _Please don’t do that again_.

Sean sighs and sleeps, and wishes he could wake up fifty years in the future when all this shit is over.

 

Alex loves Hank and Sean, but sometimes he wants to slam their heads together. He can’t believe how removed they are from everything that’s happening beyond the mansion. Hank’s always been a little too much like Charles – too theoretical and idealistic. They’re lovely theories and great ideas, but the real world lets that stuff wash over it and keeps on being awful. It’s one thing to propose solutions to problems, but the solutions are all based on the principle of everyone involved being as detached and reasonable as Hank.

People are violent and cruel, and Alex has known that since childhood. Idealism has no place in a world where people are tortured and murdered for who they love, and for what they look like. Hank hides behind his vague ideas and theories, and Sean just plain hides. He avoids confrontation so well that Alex could kill him.

The kids who went to Washington understand. Gail, Freddie, Lois, Wayne, Lyle. Others in the mansion who are willing to engage with the news, ready to debate and form their own opinions. Of course, the debates get violent occasionally, but Alex still holds the most destructive power in the house, so he’s able to break it up most of the time. He’s getting better at controlling it too, and directing it.

He still thinks about Armando. It feels sometimes like he’s carrying Armando around with him, or at least his shade or ghost. He asks himself constantly what Armando would think of a situation or a person, what he would do, how he would react. It helps to keep his own temper in check, because Armando was better than he could ever dream of being. Armando was smart and cool and funny. Alex is still too loud, too brash, too cruel sometimes.

Would Armando be proud of the world as it is now? Would he be proud of Alex?

Alex says his name sometimes in the gaps between his thoughts – Armando Muñoz, not Darwin. (He doesn’t know when he began to prefer the real name to the nickname.) He mouths, “Armando,” to himself, mouths the shape and sounds of the word and refuses to let himself forget what its bearer looked like. Armando was tall, with thin arms and legs and a confident walk, an easy smile, a pleasant voice – not too deep or high or scratchy. Smooth and kind. Like the guy himself. Armando.

There’s a rhythm in his relationship with Sean and Hank these days. He’ll be enraged by their apathy and storm off, not speaking to them for days at a time. Then he’ll start to miss them, and eventually he’ll let Sean catch him round the waist and kiss his forehead and lead him up to the attic, where Hank will be waiting with a small smile.

They’ve got a nest there now, blankets and sheets over cushions on the floor in a space wide enough for them to all lie down comfortably. Between them, Alex’s anger is soothed away. Hank’s dry wit and Sean’s outlandish sense of humour complement each other – Alex always laughs the most up in the attic with them.

Like that, with just them and no barriers, Alex can let his guard down. He can let them touch him and hold him. _It’s okay_ , Hank always tells them, even though it’s been so long that they actually believe him now. It’s still nice to hear. Alex sleeps with his head on Hank’s chest and Sean’s arm around his waist and wishes it could always be like this.

 

Hank sits in his lab and cries for the first time in years after Alex leaves. He wasn’t the only one drafted – Sean’s birthday was drawn as well, but while Alex accepted his fate with steely eyes, Sean immediately made plans to flee to Canada. The resulting argument…Hank can’t call it an argument. Argument isn’t a strong enough word. Alex and Sean were at each other’s throats.

Sean flew away, of course. He hasn’t come back yet, and Alex is already gone. So many of their students have left now. Charles is sinking – he’s trying to hide it, but Hank’s known him long enough to tell. It’s like JFK all over again. After Charles realised that Erik was the one who had killed the president, he’d locked himself away for a week.

This slow abandonment is worse, in a way. At least Erik left and didn’t come back. A clean break. This is so much worse. This is Alex leaving to go to Vietnam and get himself killed, and Sean running to Canada in a cloud of bitterness and fury.

Sean’s always kept his opinions buried, but Alex’s cruel words brought them out tonight. Sean is against the war, it turns out. Against the war, the government, and supporting the whole mess.

Alex had shot an energy blast at him, and Sean had blown him out of a window with a single scream, teeth bared like an animal. Hank thinks of them just a couple of days before, curled up and moving together, smiling and happy.

He cries as quietly as he can, tears dripping down his face and onto his legs. This morning he had two lovers, and he thought they were all happy. Tonight he has none, and he might never see either of them again.

 

Sean’s learning French in bits and pieces. Celine’s mutation marks her out, so they move at night and keep to the shadows, her hood up to hide her mottled skin, sunglasses on to hide her unnaturally white eyes. Canada’s not quite the paradise for draft dodgers that Sean had imagined. Or maybe it is for normal people, but there are people looking for mutants here.

He keeps hearing the name Trask.

“We’re an endangered species,” says a mutant who calls himself Leper. His skin looks like it’s rotting, but his spit can eat through concrete. (He reminds Sean of Angel, and he wonders where she and Raven are now. He’d join them now if they offered.) “We’ve gotta stick together, or they’ll wipe us off the map.”

Sean moves through Montreal like a hunted man, feeling eyes on his back. He misses home so fiercely he aches with it. He never took it for granted after the professor let him stay – it’s why he kept his mouth shut as Alex became more and more pro-war. He never wanted to lose what he had. But being drafted had been the last straw.

He imagines going to Vietnam with Alex, the two of them keeping each other safe and writing joint letters home to Hank. Trekking through a jungle with a gun in his hands, helmet over shorn stubble instead of curls, murdering and destroying everything he comes into contact with.

It’s no life for him. He chokes his tears down and prays to God, Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and all the saints he remembers from childhood for Alex to be kept safe. He feels unworthy to invoke their names, even now, because he knows he’s an abomination in the eyes of heaven, but he’s desperate and scared, so he prays.

He writes to Hank when he can, but of course Hank can’t write back because Sean has no address. He hopes Alex writes to Hank as well. He apologises in every letter he sends, and kisses the envelopes before he posts them.

 

The mansion, once so loud and exciting, now feels like a tomb. Rooms lie empty, furniture gathering dust. Hank drives into town to buy food every week, and comes back one time with sheets for the furniture they’re not using. The last few students left last month, and Hank pretends not to hear Charles crying in his bedroom.

They’re trapped in this prison of a house together, rattling around the empty interior. Hank acquiesces when Charles asks to try the serum, and ignores the following addiction. Charles seems to have at least found a measure of peace, and he spends hours outside walking the grounds.

For a while, Hank thinks it will be okay. He writes replies to Sean’s letters and puts them in a drawer instead of sending them, because Sean never leaves an address for him to send them to. He writes to Alex more, trying to sound cheerful. Alex’s letters are all about boot camp at first. Learning to be a soldier, to think as part of a team, to treat his gun like an extension of his body. It’s clumsy compared to his energy blasts, Alex writes, but it’ll do the job.

Hank might keep a beast under his skin, but at heart he’s a pacifist. Alex’s letters start to come from Vietnam, the contents carefully screened. Hank bristles at the idea of someone opening their letters and censoring their words, but there’s nothing he can do. He’s trapped here. And Charles is retreating to his study as the cold weather moves in.

By the time it’s warm enough to go outside again, Charles has already grown used to the stagnant indoors, having taken root over the winter. He doesn’t go outside anymore, doesn’t even open a window. Hank keeps the kitchen stocked and buys spirits when Charles asks him to. He doesn’t have anywhere else to go, so he buys in silence even when bourbon becomes a staple of their weekly grocery list.

Alex and Sean might have gone in different directions, but they both left him behind to rot. Hank’s bitterness grows, sinks into his skin, and festers.

 

There aren’t words to describe Vietnam. Alex tries anyway, for Hank’s sake. At first he tries to stay cheerful, writes things like _hot_ , like _heavy_ , like _crowded_ , leaves out the details of the boredom and petty disputes and power plays, leaves out the way other soldiers pay a middle-aged Vietnamese woman (one of the ones who comes in to help clean the base) to bring girls for rolls in the rice paddies. He leaves out complaints about the constant diarrhoea from the malaria pills and the switch from dust to mud, dry season to wet. He tells his fellow soldiers that Hank’s his best friend from back home. _Love, Alex_ , he writes at the end of every letter, and doesn’t ask about Sean.

Hank tells him anyway, or tells him what little he knows. Sean’s living rough in Montreal, and he says sorry. Alex turns his eyes from home to the front line, and when his mutation is discovered and put to use by the military, he finds himself unable to write letters at all. He is struck utterly silent. He does as he’s told, follows orders, and wishes to God in blazes of red light that burn through wood and metal and flesh that he’d never been born.

 

No matter how much Sean tries, trouble keeps finding him. Bad drugs, shady deals, and even an arrest. He had to use his mutation to break out of that, and he’d even faked his own death with the help of some friends and a lot of definitely-not-acquired-by-legal-means money. Celine’s long gone, and Sean’s trying to live the high life under a new name – he’s Andrew now. He thought about calling himself Alex or Hank, but that seemed masochistic even for him.

The bars he goes to with his new friends are subject to regular police raids, and Sean’s become adept at running out of back doors and climbing over fences. Some of his friends call him a coward for running, but Sean doesn’t let it get to him. Better alive than dead. He knows Trask Industries would love to get hold of him – he’s heard plenty of horror stories from the very, very small mutant community in Montreal’s underground.

The mutants here are edgy, much more aggressive than he’s used to. Sean tends to stay away from them – plenty of them are more than willing to point the finger at the ‘deviant homosexuals’. He’s never been so grateful that his mutation is invisible. He keeps his head down and tries to lose himself in the whirl of it. It’s not all police raids and public shame – he has friends here, and they have fun.

He’s stopped writing to Hank in the interests of trying to forget the past. The quiet laziness of the mansion is a lifetime away from the squat he shares with some of his friends, the struggle to find money to eat, the fights that break out between the police and the patrons of the clubs they raid.

He’s got to be careful. He’s got to keep his head down. He sleeps around a lot, young and reckless and used to people touching his lips and telling him he’s pretty. He plays up to it, gets ready with Kira, who never goes out in men’s clothing. They do each other’s makeup, and Sean breathes ecstasy into strangers’ pillows and cool tiled walls, drunk and high and happy, lit up from the inside.

After so much time spent intoxicated, it’s a painful, painful shock to wake up in sober agony in an unfamiliar hotel room. There’s blood and spunk on the sheets, sticky between his thighs, and his insides are so sore he can’t bring himself to move for long minutes. If he’s found like this, he’ll be arrested, and it’s only the threat of that that gets him up, little sobbing noises escaping his throat as he pulls his pants on and leaves through the window, stumbling down the fire escape in so much pain he can barely breathe.

When he finally makes it back to the squat, Kira and Paul take care of him. Between them, they wash him clean and give him painkillers, and debate whether or not to take him to a hospital. In his lucid moments, Sean begs them not to. It’s obvious what happened to him, and he doesn’t want anyone else touching him.

He leaves Montreal as soon as he’s okay again, still feeling fragile and bruised. Not knowing who did it is the worst thing – all he knows is that he left the club with two guys, and that’s second-hand information from someone Paul knows. He can’t stay in Montreal with this feeling that any man he walks past on the street could be the one who did that to him. He can’t go out to parties knowing that his attackers might be there.

He leaves the city and moves on up to Quebec. He knows some friends there, and on his first night in Quebec’s clubs he blows a man in a bathroom just because he can. The night after, he does it again, and on the night after that, he comes prepared and lets a gorgeous drag queen fuck him on a dressing room floor. He’s imploding and exploding at the same time, fractured in a hundred thousand places. In an abandoned church he screams and shatters every stained glass window left, coloured splinters bursting against old stone.

 

Hank helps Charles clean up the mansion, and they wait in vain for Raven to call. Never before has Hank been so glad about Charles’ insistence on keeping their location such a closely-guarded secret. There are photographs of him splashed in every paper from here to Timbuktu, and Hank considers using the suppression serum for the rest of his natural life. He could do it. It’s not like he’s required to help save the world every day, after all. Once a decade he can bust out the blue fur, and that’s fine by him.

He leaps around the house as a blue monster though, simply because it makes cleaning easier. Charles helps where he can, but he’s off the serum now, and back in his wheelchair. The bulk of the work falls at Hank’s feet, the way it has for years.

He’s moved on from Alex and Sean, but the songs they used to listen to trigger memories of lying together in the attic or on the roof. Hank goes up there to put unused furniture and files into storage and tries to ignore the tiny couch and The Armchair that sparked everything. He goes up onto the roof and imagines Sean flying in, Alex waiting for both of them below with cheap beer and a crooked smile.

They’re gone, and they’re not coming back. Hank pisses over the edge of the roof and goes back inside to keep cleaning. If he doesn’t do it, who will?

 

_The hand on his jaw is strong, and he’s held in place as Shaw leans in with a tiny compressed ball of Alex’s power in his fingers. “Adapt to this,” he whispers, and the energy is pushed inside him._

_It burns, so Armando freezes. It expands, so Armando contracts. But it sears through his defences, and his organs are going, burning, vaporised into ash. There’s no pain – he adapts not to feel it. He turns and reaches for Alex, who’s staring like he can’t quite understand what’s happening._

_He understands when their eyes meet, and Armando wishes he had more time – no one’s ever understood him with a glance like that, they match up so perfectly – more time, just enough time to tell Alex it’s going to be okay –_

_The heat reaches his head and the light burns his eyes out, burns his brain to dust. It’s over._

_Ash floats on the air, and Armando’s consciousness fades…_

…reforms.

 

Of the four of them, Alex is the only one who can pass as human. Eric could manage it even with his eyes, but his tattoos draw too much attention. Mort could maybe pass, but his skin just looks weird close up. Evan has _spikes_ growing out of his head. Alex had to ditch them as soon as the plane touched American soil, and he’d feel worse about that if it weren’t for the fact that there are apparently men out for mutant blood, and they’re in the military.

Alex wasn’t planning on staying anyway, but that’s the final nail in the coffin. He and the others had done everything they were told. He’s set forests on fire and watched people burn, heard their screams. And their commanders were still going to turn them over to God knew who for experimentation.

Thinking back to Cuba, Alex wonders whether he made the right choice on the beach. Raven’s still free, after all, and clearly capable. He wonders where the hell she learned to fight like that.

He leaves the base as soon as possible and empties his bank account, buys a car and drives west, refusing to entertain the possibility of going back to the mansion. He lost contact with Hank a few years ago, and his instincts are telling him to lie low for a while.

On his way through Kansas, Alex hears the news unfold. He pulls over on the side of the road to pay full attention to the radio, the news coming in from Paris. A blue woman with red hair, a blue monster with fur, and a man who appeared to flip cars with a wave of his hand.

Alex stays in Kansas, not sure whether to keep heading west or to head back home (he still thinks of the mansion as home, even now). He’s pulled in two directions at once, and he can’t come to a decision quickly enough.

He stands in a packed diner so silent he can hear everyone breathing, all of them listening to the radio reporter tell them that the mutants from Paris came to the states. That one of them tried to kill the president, and other saved his life.

“Just like normal people,” he hears a woman tell her boyfriend. “Everyone’s got different views, even if some of them have blue skin.”

Arguments flare up, and Alex leaves before he loses the feeling of hope her words have put in him. He still doesn’t know whether to turn his car east or west.

 

It takes a while, but Armando finally makes it back to New York. He knows he’s woken up eleven years in the future now, and while he’s glad that the world isn’t a smoking nuclear crater, he’s still scared beyond all limits. But he’s a young, naked black man walking up the interstate, so he takes it careful.

He takes clothes from a washing line and the soles of his feet harden to make the walk easy. Or easier, at least. They still ache, and he still keeps his eyes open and hides at night, keeping away from main roads. He’s skittish, cautious, and it takes him close to two and a half weeks to make it home.

His mama screams loud enough to wake the dead when she sees him, and then cries for about three hours straight while he hugs her. His brothers and sisters aren’t here. Ana and Sofia are married, both with children. Javier, little Javi, is a mutant like him, and has moved in with his girlfriend just a block away. Hernando is dead, killed in action in Vietnam. His papi is still at work.

Armando cries like a child in his mother’s lap, weeping for everything he’s lost. Hernando, his little brother, his little brother who was so quick and funny, throwing tantrums and racing Armando and Javi up the street at every opportunity, is dead. His baby brother, barely old enough to fight, drafted into a war his mama can’t explain because she’s crying too hard.

When his papi comes home, he goes pale and starts murmuring prayers. Only when Armando speaks, “Papi? It’s me, I came home –” does he find himself clutched in a tight embrace.

Armando has never seen his father cry before, but he’s crying now, cracked voice whispering, “Mi hijo, mi hijo,” _my boy, my son_ , into Armando’s neck.

He meets his sisters again, and Javi hugs him so tight that Armando’s spine strengthens to avoid damage. Javi’s mutation is a gentle one – he can encourage plant growth. Under his hand, their mama’s potted herbs flourish, and she makes food for all of them, a stew in the huge pot she uses when the whole family is together. Armando sits between his sisters, neither of whom can let go of him for a single second.

From Sofia, he has two nephews, twins who drive her crazy. Their names are Willie and Ralph, their father a soldier overseas called Louis. Ana’s husband is called Vince, and they have two daughters and a son. Rosa, Maria, and Armando. “After you,” she tells him, smiling through tears and touching his face. None of them can stop crying, and the food tastes saltier because of it.

The table is crowded, but they squeeze in together and pick up from where they left off.

 

The mansion’s changed since Sean left. The gardens are a mess, and the place has a distinct air of neglect. The sign is up though – Xavier’s Institute is still running. He’s cautious all the same, everything in him ready to run if shit goes sideways. He hasn’t survived this long by taking risks. His wings are on, so he can fly if he can get a good drop. He’s out of practice – gone are the days of lazy hours spent flying just for the hell of it.

He skulks up the drive, sticking to the treeline and moving slow, eyes darting about. That’s how he catches movement upstairs, a shadow behind a window on the third floor. It’s there and gone in an instant, but at least it’s proof that the mansion isn’t empty.

Sean’s far too wary to try the front door, so he goes around, checking the windows as he passes them. There are boxes everywhere, brooms and sheets covering furniture in some rooms. Are they moving out? Or maybe moving back in?

Hank and Raven were in Paris together along with Magneto – maybe they’re on his side now. Hank and Charles used to be close, but maybe not anymore. It’s been four years since Sean left. A lot can change in four years. It certainly feels like longer.

He hides out till night falls, and sleeps in a bush wrapped in his coat. When dew trickles into his eyes and wakes him up, he watches the sun rise and takes the opportunity of early light to take a closer look at the mansion. An open window on the second floor beckons, and he climbs up with ease.

The room is empty, uniform, a student’s bedroom. Sean slips in as quietly as he can, careful of any creaks in the floorboards, and starts to look around. From what he can tell, moving along the corridor and peering into each room, the professor shut up shop, and now he’s reopening. There must be someone else helping him – the shadow Sean saw yesterday was an upright walker, too tall to be in a wheelchair.

Hands dig into his shoulders and wrench him back, slamming him into the wall, and Sean screams without thinking, blasting his attacker back and running for the stairs.

“Shit, shit, shit,” he mutters as he runs, “shouldn’t’ve come back, should’ve just stayed in Quebec, shit, holy mother of –” There are footsteps behind him, and Sean puts on a burst of speed up to the third floor. There isn’t time to make it to the attic, so he runs for the nearest room and the nearest window – this drop is good enough, he’s flown off smaller jumps.

There’s furniture in the way, and he cries out and grunts as his attacker snags his hood and slams him to the floor. “Sean!”

Blue fur and glasses over yellow eyes. Sean’s chest heaves, and Hank laughs, coming round and pulling him up into a tight hug. “It’s you, you came back! God, where were you a week ago?”

“Quebec,” Sean gasps against Hank’s shoulder, and hugs him back. “Jesus, you scared me.”

“You scared me.” Hank pulls back and smiles, eyes sparkling. “I’m so glad you’re here!”

_Sean!_

The shout penetrates both their minds, making them flinch in tandem. _I thought you were dead!_ Charles says, mental voice giddy. _Erik told me you’d been killed!_

“How the hell would he know?” Sean stares at Hank, mystified. “I haven’t seen him since Cuba.”

“Breakfast,” Hank says firmly, getting up and pulling Sean with him. “We can catch up over eggs. Sound good?”

Sean hasn’t eaten for two days, and he sighs. “Sounds _great_.”

 

Armando’s making inquiries as he settles into his new life, which is also his old life. He’s been dead for eleven years, which makes things tricky. To prove he’s who he says he is and get himself officially on the record as alive (and with a working social security number), he has to jump through all sorts of irritating hoops and do everything but sell his soul to prove his identity.

But between negotiating red tape and bureaucratism, Armando tries to find out what happened to Charles Xavier and his friends. It’s an uphill struggle, but Armando’s determined. If anyone can explain what happened to him, it’s the professor. And if he finds the professor, he can find the others. He thinks about Alex the most. (Alex’s expression as he realised that Armando was dying in front of him.) Armando needs to find him and tell him it’s going to be okay. Needs to find him and make sure he knows it’s not his fault.

In the end, it’s his friends who find him. Or rather, Raven finds him. In New York’s mutant community, Javi isn’t a big player but he’s got a respected voice, and Armando’s been accompanying him to a few of the gatherings that spring up every week or so. He holds his tongue for the most part – an eleven-year absence means that he’s still catching up on everything that’s happened since his ‘death’.

She walks into the room like she owns it, utterly confident, stalking forward and looking a few of them in the eyes. There are a few here with mutations that can’t be hidden, but there’s no one like her; so proud, so unashamed. Naked and blue, she smiles and sits down, crossing her legs. It’s only when she speaks that Armando gets suspicious, and when she tells them her name is Mystique, he’s too shocked to do more than gape.

It’s _Raven_.

No longer goofy and giggly, no longer awkward in her skin, no longer eager to please and make friends. This Raven is older, smarter, sharper. Her voice is less expressive, eyes cold when she speaks of what she’s seen. Armando hardly knows her.

She turns to leave before most of the others, and Armando hurries to stop her. He says her name and barely touches her wrist before she’s slapping it away, yellow eyes narrow. They widen as Armando stares at her, and she takes a step back with her lips parted, flicking up and down his body. “Darwin?”

“It’s me.”

“Prove it.” She’s sharp again, muscles tensed to fight. He flexes his shoulders and grows scales over his shirt, the ones he used to protect himself from Alex and Sean the night they showed each other their powers.

“It’s me. Ra –”

“Shut up,” she snaps, and grabs his collar to pull him outside. She’s much stronger than she looks, and Armando stumbles after her. “I don’t use that name,” she tells him in the hall, still suspicious. “And I don’t believe you’re him.”

“How else can I prove it?” he asks, palms upturned.

“You can’t,” she says. “I’ve seen mutants who can absorb memories. You might be a shifter like me. Darwin’s dead. I saw him die.”

“Charles would know, right?” Armando tries. “He could read my mind and prove I’m me. Where is he? Are you guys in town together?”

She stares at him like he’s said something particularly stupid. “No,” she says finally, raising an eyebrow. “We’re not together.”

“Can you tell me where he is? I want to find the others, but I didn’t know who to ask or –”

“So that’s your game?” Her elbow is at his throat, which hardens to protect him from the pressure. She practically hisses at him. “You want Charles, huh? Well you can forget it.”

“Come on, Raven, it’s me!” Armando rises up on tiptoes, unwilling to fight back. “You were the one who came up with our dumb nicknames, you had a thing for Hank, you…you had blonde hair!”

“I saw you die!” she snarls. “You exploded right in front of us.”

“I evolved.” Armando swallows. “I woke up in the same place a couple months ago. I don’t know how I survived, but I swear I’m me.”

“You get away from my brother!” Javi’s voice is quavering. Raven looks over her shoulder at him, unamused.

“Your brother, huh?”

“Raven, meet Javi, my little brother.” Armando pretends he’s not currently pinned to a wall. “Javi, this is Raven, one of the mutants I met in Virginia.”

“You’re really his brother?” Raven asks Javi in a flat tone, and he nods.

“I’ve got a big family,” Armando tells her as cheerfully as he can manage. “Two sisters, two…one brother,” (remembering Hernando’s death still hurts) “and three nephews and two nieces. And my parents, of course.”

“Of course.” She still doesn’t believe him, and Armando sighs.

“Would a shapeshifter be able to adapt the way I do?” She purses her lips and takes a step back, releasing him. “I’ll grow gills again if you like,” he offers.

“That won’t be necessary.”

Raven has a schedule, but she gives him directions to Charles’ mansion, which is where Charles and Hank will be. Angel’s dead, she tells him in an empty voice. Erik’s on the run. She saw Alex in Vietnam, but she hasn’t heard from Sean since Cuba.

Armando’s heart breaks to hear what she has to say. They were meant to work together against Shaw for everyone’s benefit, he wants to cry. What happened to cause such strife? She leaves before he can ask his questions, and he stays with his parents for one more day before heading for northeast Westchester.

 

Hank opens the door and stares at the guy staring at him. Guy blinks and looks him up and down. “Well I know I’m definitely at the right place.” Hank bristles, blue fur rippling, fangs bared.

“Did you want something?” There’s something about the stranger he can’t quite place, something niggling at the edge of his brain…

“I’m looking for Professor Xavier?” The guy smiles slightly, a small, non-threatening thing, and Hank sucks in a sharp breath, the niggling edge sparking a ridiculous, impossible thought.

“What’s your name?”

“Armando Muñoz. He might remember me as Darwin though.”

Hank’s knees are weak. “I’m hallucinating,” he mutters. “Too much bleach.”

“Are you okay, man?” Darwin – Hank remembers now – steps forward when Hank steps back, and he shakes his head.

“Who are you? Darwin’s dead, he’s been dead for years. Raven, if this is you, this isn’t cool.”

“It’s really me.” Darwin holds his hands up. “But hey, if you don’t believe me, there’s an easy way to check – the professor will be able to tell, right?”

“Stay right here.” Hank closes the door in his face and leaps away, reeling from the sheer impossibility of it. Charles is in his office, and the smile he greets Hank with dies when he sees Hank’s face. “There’s a man outside,” Hank says, no preamble. “Is he who he says he is?”

Charles raises his eyebrows, but touches two fingers to his temple (an old habit that’s made a return). He turns pale a second later, eyes flying wide. “Oh my god.”

“Is it him?”

“I think it is.” Charles starts wheeling himself out, and Sean comes down the stairs with his arms full of sheets as they reach the entrance hall.

“Hey guys, where should I put these?”

“Darwin’s alive.” Hank doesn’t see Sean’s reaction, eyes fixed on the door as he pulls it open to reveal the man on the other side. Darwin’s still there, and he beams when he sees the professor, and laughs at Sean’s ashen face.

“It’s good to see you too.”

Charles grabs his hand and shakes it, close to tears. “I cannot tell you how glad I am to see you, Armando. And how incredibly sorry I am…what happened was inexcusable, and I am so sorry we weren’t there to protect you.”

Darwin shrugs, smile soft. “Hey, looks like you could’ve used some protection yourself. Nice place you got here.”

“We have to tell Alex.” Of course Sean’s first words are about their ex-boyfriend. Darwin looks at him, surprised.

“He’s not here?”

“I’m afraid, in truth we don’t know where he is.” Charles lets go of Darwin’s hand in order to wheel backwards and allow him inside. “I’m sorry for the state of the place, by the way. I rather let things go a bit.”

“There are mice in the kitchen,” Sean deadpans, and pulls Darwin into a tight hug. “We saw you die,” he mumbles into Darwin’s shoulder. “How the hell, man?”

“Not that we’re not really, really happy you’re alive.” Hank claps Darwin’s back and realises when Darwin gives him a slightly uncertain smile that he’s unrecognisable. “You…have no idea who I am.”

“Come on, don’t the glasses give it away?” Sean drawls. Expressions pass over Darwin’s face – recognition, doubt, uncertainty, suspicion.

“…Hank?”

Hank smiles, a little bitter even now. “Ta-da.”

“Oh my God, man, I didn’t even recognise you!” Darwin hugs him, and it takes Hank a good second to respond, shocked by his enthusiasm. “Whoa.” Darwin holds him at arm’s length and grins. “You look great!”

“You think so?” Hank blinks, startled.

“Yeah! You look tough.” Darwin squeezes his shoulder. “Love the colour too – reminds me of Raven.”

Charles’ smile fades, and he sighs. “We should probably get you up to speed on what you’ve missed.”

“And then we need to find Alex,” Sean insists, but Charles hesitates.

“Sean…Hank lost contact with him over two years ago. There’s every chance Alex isn’t…well, that he’s not…”

“Raven said she saw him in Vietnam.” Darwin looks between them, their shock lost on him. “I saw her in New York a couple of days ago, and the way she was talking made it sound recent. He’s probably fine.”

Charles brightens again, and commandeers Darwin to hear everything about Raven he possibly can. Hank lingers behind with Sean, who’s looking worried. “You okay?”

“We should make sure he’s the real deal before we tell Alex,” Sean says quietly. “You know how hung up he was on Darwin.”

One of their little unacknowledged truths – Alex would never be over Darwin, would never stop thinking about him and feeling guilty about his death. Hank had always figured that Alex had been a bit in love with Darwin, and that had all been built up so much after Shaw had killed him. He remembers the night Alex broke down and cried in his arms, not hearing his and Sean’s whispered reassurances and soothing words.

“If he is Darwin…” Hank looks at Sean. “Will you go find Alex?”

Sean nods. “I’ll take Darwin with me if he’s real,” he adds. “I can borrow the professor’s car, right?”

“Probably. Let’s make sure he’s the real deal first though.”

Charles locates Alex in Hutchinson, Kansas, and then reads Darwin’s mind. He comes out of his trance to tell them that he thinks Darwin’s body couldn’t cope with the raw energy Shaw had placed in it, so he adapted beyond the need for a body, becoming a being of pure energy. “It must have taken you all this time to pull yourself back together, so to speak,” Charles says, giving Darwin an admiring look. “Incredible. You really are something special, Armando.”

“Oh, I’ve always known that.” Darwin grins. He and Sean leave that night, and Hank falls asleep wondering whether he dreamed the whole thing.

 

Alex’s motel room is paid up till the end of the week, so he frowns when someone knocks on the door. When he opens it to find Sean on the other side, he gapes. “Sean?”

“Can we come in?” Sean slips past without waiting for a reply, an even taller guy following.

Alex catches the stranger’s arm and scowls, old anger at Sean flashing to the surface in an instant. “Hey, I don’t know what the hell you…think…”

Armando Muñoz smiles down at him. “Hey, Alex.”

Alex can’t breathe, holding onto Armando’s arm as tight as he can, his other hand finding Armando’s shoulder and squeezing. “Sean,” he whispers, staring and staring and staring. If this is Raven, he will throw her through a window.

“It’s him,” Sean says quietly from somewhere behind him. “The professor checked. Apparently you can adapt to not having a body anymore. Who knew, right?”

Alex is shaking, fighting down tears. This can’t be real. “I saw you die,” he chokes, and lets go of Armando to collapse to his knees, legs giving out. Armando is there a second later, hugging him as much as he can. There’s a hand in his hair, an arm looped round his shoulders, and Alex breathes in and lets out a cracked, broken sound because Armando’s _alive_. “I saw you die,” he says hoarsely, and Armando shifts, spreading his legs to pull Alex closer.

“I’m okay now,” he says into Alex’s ear. “It’s okay, it’s okay, I’m fine. I’m here now.”

It takes a long time for Alex to calm down. He doesn’t quite cry, though he sheds a few tears. Mostly he clings to the solidity of Armando’s body against his and gasps, crying without actually crying.

Sean’s the first to stand, and he touches Alex’s head as he goes past and opens the door. “I’ll wait in the car for a bit,” he says quietly. “Let you two catch up.” He looks different from when Alex last saw him. More detached and reserved. His hair’s shorter, barely long enough to play with. It looks like he hasn’t smiled for a while.

Alex wonders briefly how Hank is, but then Armando’s helping him up onto the bed and they’re talking, Alex babbling, apologising, Armando firm in his repeated assertions – “It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t know what Shaw was gonna do – we didn’t even know he could do that. It _wasn’t_ your fault.”

Alex is already holding himself back. He wants to hug Armando again and cradle his face, press their foreheads together and just breathe him in. He wants to clutch Armando to him and never let him go again. “I missed you,” he says instead, quiet. “I think…thought about you all the time.”

Armando’s smile is as kind as Alex remembers, and he’s so grateful he could weep. It was worth surviving hell for this.

 

Armando gets that he’s missed eleven years, but he’s definitely missing something more here. Alex has a car, and Armando rides with him seeing as he rode down with Sean. They stop at gas stations and a couple of motels on the way back, and Alex and Sean barely exchange a word. When he tentatively broaches the subject, Alex shakes his head and focuses on the road. “It’s kinda complicated.”

They talk about other things. Alex tells him about Vietnam, and Armando imagines Hernando in the jungle. It wasn’t the war Alex thought it would be, and he confesses his anger, his uncertainty, his guilt. Guilt is a feature of his life, it seems.

They knew each other for less than a week before Armando ‘died’, but they click as though they’ve known each other their whole lives. Armando had worried about this – what feels like a few months for him has been years for Alex – but they slot together without missing a step. Armando’s never met anyone who _gets_ him the way Alex does. They can communicate with a glance, a tap of the fingers, a smile. Hours pass in near-silence, both of them just happy to have found each other.

Alex and Armando share motel rooms and Sean gets his own. On the second morning, Armando sees Sean come out with another man and share a kiss with him before going back inside. Armando doesn’t want to ask Alex about it in case Alex doesn’t know, but he hopes Sean is careful. He hopes he’s happy – he knows Sean went to Canada to escape the draft and lived a pretty rough life there. Sean told him stories on the way down that made Armando cry with laughter, but in hindsight he sees the danger in them. Sean narrowly escaping police raids and taking dodgy drugs. Hanging out in shady places and mixing with scary people.

The Sean Armando remembers was so much younger than this.

When they get back to Westchester, Hank and Alex hug for long seconds, and it isn’t long before Charles suggest they take Armando up to the attic. “What’s so special about the attic?” he asks as he follows the others up ever-narrowing flights of stairs.

“We used to hang out up there while we were students,” Hank tells him, the only one of them truly at ease. “Or on the roof. Did Sean tell you he can fly?”

“Yeah, he may have mentioned that a few times.” Armando grins at him and Sean smirks. To hear Sean talk about it, flying’s better than sex. “Sean can fly, Alex can control his powers, and you’ve bulked up. You guys all left me behind.”

“We didn’t mean to,” Alex says, expression pained when he looks over his shoulder. Armando reaches out to press his palm between Alex’s shoulder blades and gives him a smile.

“I know. It’s okay.”

The attic is huge, and Sean and Hank drag armchairs and a tiny couch out of the corners for them to sit down. Sean sprawls out along the couch, legs dangling over the edge, and lights up a cigarette. Hank rolls his eyes and opens the door to the roof to let the smoke out, and Armando falls into an armchair. For some reason, it makes Sean laugh, and Alex flushes.

Yeah, Armando’s definitely missing something.

“So I’ve heard all about these two,” he says, leaving it for now and grinning at Hank when he sits down. “What’ve you been up to? Apart from perfecting your look, I mean.”

Hank snorts, but obligingly starts to tell Armando about his work, and about the school. They’ll be opening again soon, he hopes, as soon as the cleaning is done. Charles is reluctant to search for any of their old students because then he’ll know for sure how many are gone forever. “Quite a few were drafted,” Hank says quietly.

“Like you guys,” Armando looks at Sean and Alex, and knows immediately that he’s trodden on a wasp nest.

“Yeah, just like us.” Alex gives Sean a hard look. “And while some of us went to fight for our country, others skipped off to live the high life over the border.”

Sean sits up and bares his teeth. “Hey, fuck you, Alex.”

“Guys –” Armando tries to steer them away from confrontation, but they ignore him, and Hank just puts his head in his hands.

“Canada wasn’t the haven you wanted?” Alex asks, snide, and Sean throws something at him – a lighter he’s been playing with. Alex just turns his head in time for it to glance off his temple instead of it smacking into his eye, and he’s on his feet a second later, furious. Armando jumps up just in time to get between him and Sean, hands on his shoulders and eyes calm in the face of Alex’s anger.

“Leave it, Alex. What the hell happened with you guys?” he asks, turning a frown on Sean, whose glare fades. He looks behind Armando to Alex, disbelieving.

“You didn’t tell him?”

“Tell me what?” Armando looks between them, but Alex just pulls away and sits down again, a pink tint in his pale cheeks.

“Shut up, Sean.”

Hank stares at Alex as well, mouth open. “Alex –”

“ _Don’t_.” Armando can’t be the only one who hears the pleading note in his voice.

“You fuckin hypocrite,” Sean snaps. “You’re such a coward.”

“Is anyone gonna fill me in here?” Armando asks, trying to keep his tone light.

“You’re open-minded, right, Darwin?” Sean lies down again, head propped on the arm of the tiny couch. Armando sits, nods. Sean stretches and casts Alex a look of disgust. “You don’t mind the idea of guys fucking other guys?”

“ _Jesus_ , Sean…” Alex ducks his head, but Armando can still see how red his face has gone.

“Yesterday morning,” Armando starts delicately, and Sean grins, pointing his still-smouldering cigarette at him.

“I knew you’d be cool with it. See, Alex? He saw…Tony? Whatever, leaving my room yesterday. Besides, I thought you were proud of it? What happened to all that shit you used to spout about Stonewall?”

“You can’t be proud of it in the army,” Alex mutters to his knees.

“You two…” Armando’s getting it now, looking between Alex and Sean, their bitterness and sharp silences fitting into place. “You two were together?”

“Three.” Sean’s voice softens, and he looks over at Hank, who gives Armando a small smile. It’s hard to tell whether he’s sad or embarrassed.

“The _three_ of you used to be together.” Armando amends, and internally congratulates himself on how well he’s taking this in stride, forcing his eyes not to widen, his jaw not to drop.

“Pretty much,” Sean drawls. Armando wonders if he’s high. “Hank doesn’t do the sex part, but the relationship thing we all did together. And he stayed for the sex too, so I guess we really did do everything together.”

“I have an effectively non-existent sex drive,” Hank tells Armando out of the corner of his mouth.

Sean kicks his feet. “But the draft put an end to all that, and now you’re back.”

“Me being back stops you guys being happy together?” Armando never meant to get in the way of anything, but this wasp nest keeps on delivering stings.

“Alex has always been hot for you,” Sean says, blunt enough to make Armando reel as if from a physical blow.

“ _Christ_ , Sean.” Alex gives Armando the most heartbreaking look, like his deepest darkest secrets have been flayed from his skin and laid bare. And if what Sean just said is true, maybe they have. “I wouldn’t,” Alex stutters, “it’s not –”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Armando tells him, and Alex’s shoulders slump. To find Armando after all this time and lose him only a few days later would be torture for Alex. Armando understands. “So how did you guys…” Armando looks at them, gesturing with one hand for the story. He can reassure Alex properly later, when it’s just the two of them.

“I started it.” Sean’s on a roll with the bold words. Armando gets the sense that he’s trying to goad Alex with it. “Funny actually – you’re sitting in The Armchair.” Armando hears the capital letters, and smiles despite himself.

“The Armchair?”

“Oh my God.” Alex buries his head in his hands.

“Still ashamed?” Sean sneers, not missing a beat. “So I used to get these two up here to get high and drunk with me, right? Because people are touchier when they’ve had a few. Alex was sitting right where you are, and I was on the floor in front of him. I like people touching my hair,” he says, mock-confessing it. Armando doesn’t appreciate the condescension, but he holds his tongue. “I’m needy like that. So I’m sitting there between Alex’s legs and we’re all a bit – Hank’s right there as well, just talking crap. We’re all talking crap.”

He takes a drag on his cigarette and drops the butt to the floor. Alex sticks his leg out to crush it out with his toe without even looking. Sean continues. “I’m needy, like I said, so I just…I get the itch sometimes, y’know? I need people touching me. So I turn around and Hank keeps talking so Alex doesn’t bolt, and I suck him off. Right there where you’re sitting now.”

Suddenly, capitalising The Armchair makes sense. Sean wants Armando to be shocked, no doubt. Appalled by their collective behaviour. But all he can do is wonder what they looked like, Alex sitting where he is now with Sean between his legs, Hank watching like he’s watching now.

“You want a round of applause?” Armando grins. Humour is his default for any situation bordering on awkward.

“You think I’m joking?” Sean’s eyes shine under heavy lids, and Armando shakes his head.

“No, I know you’re telling the truth. Otherwise Alex wouldn’t be blushing so hard.” He smiles when Alex looks at him, reassuring. _It’s okay_.

“You really don’t care?” Hank stares at him. “You don’t think it’s…you know, perverted? Sick?” Armando shrugs.

“If you’re sick, so am I. All freaks together, right?”

He’s scared for a spinning second before Sean groans and hides his face against the couch cushions. “What’re the fuckin odds?” Hank laughs, and Alex…Alex isn’t quite smiling, but he looks breathless and awestruck. Armando smiles for him and shrugs again. Maybe private reassurance won’t be necessary.

“Erik and the professor said it wouldn’t be a problem.”

“What?” Sean jerks upright, squinting. “When?”

“When I drove them to Richmond. I told them I wasn’t suitable for anything the government wanted, and they said none of it was a problem. Told them I wouldn’t join the army, they said it was fine. Told them I wouldn’t kill anyone, they said it was cool. Telling them I was a deviant didn’t put them off, so I figured they were for real. Either that, or they were gonna murder me, but I’m a pretty good judge of character.”

He feels like he should congratulate them on using their time wisely by making each other happy, but that might be a little too much for one day.

 

Their dynamic is completely different now. Hank’s always been a little on the outside, and he tries to keep it that way to observe with a clearer perspective as they all work together to clean up the mansion. Darwin being back changes everything, but only in a way they would notice. It’s like everything in their relationship has shifted an inch to the left or something.

Staying detached is difficult when Darwin’s presence is so magnetic. He digs out all the record players and blasts music through the house, singing along as he helps them clean. He’s got a lot of music to catch up on, and he’s racing through every record they have, supplementing it with as much radio as he can get this far out in the wilderness. He dances with anyone who comes in his reach, and Hank finds himself spinning around an empty dormitory with Darwin’s hand in his, both of them laughing by the end.

Everything’s just slightly different, and it’s most evident in Alex. Always a little too snappy before, just a little too eager for confrontation (the sort of thing that had made Hank both dislike him and want to please him when they first met, though he still hated that Alex’s seal of approval meant so much to him), now he’s easier. He sticks close to Darwin, of course, and Hank refuses to feel any sadness about the inevitability of what’s happening there.

He’s a grown man. And besides, what had he ever offered to their relationship in the first place?

At least he’s better off than Sean, who helps out where he can and makes a clear effort to stay away from Alex and Darwin. The roof is still his favourite refuge though, the best place to fly from. “Maybe I’ll just live in the attic,” he mutters one evening, Hank sitting next to him with their shoulders pressed together. “You can call me Bat.”

“I like Banshee better.”

“A wailing spirit who warns of impending death. Yeah, you’re right, that’s much cheerier.” Sean smokes like a chimney now, and Hank shakes his head when he offers him a drag.

“Are you okay?” Hank asks after a while, the sun painting the clouds dark pink. Sean sighs.

“Man, I haven’t been okay since I left.”

“Then why leave? You didn’t have to go to Canada. You could’ve stayed.”

“Not without Alex.”

Hank closes his eyes, the sting of the unspoken _you’re not enough_ hurting a lot more than he’d expected. “Thanks,” he mutters, old bitterness pricking at the surface.

Sean turns his head and kisses his cheek, presses his forehead to Hank’s temple. “I didn’t mean it like that. I…” he sighs again and flicks his cigarette butt over the edge of the roof. “I fucked up. Canada was…Montreal was…and Quebec…I just keep messing up, and I don’t know how to stop.”

“Self-destructive behaviour patterns can be changed as long as you’re serious about it,” Hank tells him, trying to be reassuring. “Do you want to talk about it? All I’ve managed to gather is that you got drunk and high a lot.”

“And slept around,” Sean mutters. “And I faked my death and made shitty friends and got beat up a few times, mostly by cops. Got arrested once, and they locked me in with some big, tough straight dudes. And there’s lanky, skinny me with glitter all over my face, and if I use my mutation I’ll be in the back of a van by morning, so I just had to let them lay into me.”

Hank puts an arm around Sean’s shoulders and hugs him, and it just keeps coming. There are good memories, but they all have an edge of fear. Being out and proud is a dangerous business, and Sean’s been fighting his own wars while Alex has been in Vietnam. Hank compares his own experiences; the slow death of the school and Charles’ depression swallowing everything that came near. His own retreat into his lab, his pointless experiments and futile attempts to build on his ideas with no money to fund them.

He was needed here. Charles needed him here. But it still feels like he’s missed out.

It’s Darwin who understands that, of course. They wash windows together and talk about the decade Darwin missed, and he wonders what he would’ve done if he’d been present. “Would you have gone to Washington, do you think?” Hank asks. “Seen Martin Luther King?”

“I would’ve liked to.” Darwin sighs. “I can’t believe I missed so much. It’s like I woke up in a parallel universe, y’know? Like I’ll wake up tomorrow back in my own time and actually get to live those years.”

“As long as you come back to us,” Hank tries to smile. “Or at least back to Alex.”

But Darwin frowns. “I feel like I crashed in on you guys though. I know you’re…well, I hope you like me, but Sean’s avoiding me like the plague.”

“Sean’s got his own issues.” Hank shrugs and reaches up to scrub the corners, where dust and dirt has accumulated.

“You don’t miss it though? The way you guys were before?”

“I…” Hank hesitates, not wanting to lie. “Yeah, I miss it.” More than he’s ever going to admit, because he has almost no hope of finding something that good ever again, and he knows it. “But things change. People move on.” He concentrates on cleaning, not looking at Darwin. He’s used to being alone. He can deal with it.

 

Armando can tell Alex is trying not to be too clingy. They’re dancing on a knife’s edge now, and it feels like the whole mansion is waiting for them to fall. The right moment seems to crop up at least twice a day. They can’t stop touching, bumping into each other, tripping over each other, almost but not quite holding each other up.

It’s kind of delicious, in a way. Their teasing is basically flirting, and they keep catching each other’s eyes and looking away to grin at nothing. But something’s got to break soon, and Armando wants to catch this and get it under control before it does. The last thing he wants to do is screw this up.

“I don’t wanna disappoint you,” he tells Alex while they’re sweeping the rooms on the top floor, just below the attic (the attic and the roof are Sean’s territory now). “You know? It sounds harsh, but I just worry you’ve built me up too much. I’m not an idol or anything special.”

“You are special,” Alex grunts, and looks at him over his shoulder. “Idol, maybe not. This is the guy who asked Sean and me to beat him with chairs.” They both grin at the memory, then Alex goes back to sweeping. “I get what you mean though. It was like that for about two hours? Then it all sunk in, and…we’re good, right?”

“Yeah.” Armando smiles at him. “We’re good.”

They’re better than good – they’re fitting together closer every day. But Armando can’t help feeling bad about Sean and Hank, who are still clearly hung up on Alex and each other. He can’t be completely guilty, because he has time now, and he’ll never feel guilty about that. He has _time_. Time to spend with Alex and the others. Time he’ll never take for granted.

Getting everyone up into the attic requires delicacy and cunning, but Armando manages it, and cracks open a beer while he grins at the ceiling. “So. How about those sandbags, huh?”

“Asshole.” Alex throws a cushion at him, and Armando laughs. “I told you not to talk about sandbags in front of me.”

“Sandbags?” Hank asks, smiling as he looks between them. Sean smokes on the little couch and holds his peace.

Alex sighs, but can’t help smiling a little. “Cloth sandbags I like. Plastic sandbags are the Devil’s work.”

Funny how something so small can start them off. Alex tells them about the struggle of living on an army base in Vietnam, about building walls with sandbags that won’t stay together and keep leaking their contents. Dust so fine it got into the lungs and destroyed engines, mud so thick that cars had to be pulled out of the roads by helicopters. The endless diarrhoea and petty orders given by pissed-off superiors. Shots and malaria pills, mosquitos, the relentless heat.

He doesn’t say a word about fighting, or about the locals. To hear him talk, it’s as if he spent all his time burning shit and fighting off mosquitos. Armando’s heard him talk about other things, and he won’t push.

Sean passes Alex a beer, and something seems to have eased between them. Hank tells them about taking care of Charles. “Not quite as exciting, but I couldn’t leave him.” Sean talks in vague terms about Canada, about gay bars and drug runs and dirty cops.

They’ve all lived so much. Armando feels so young.

 

Armando, Sean, Hank. Everywhere Alex looks, they’re there. He sleeps badly, remembering heat and rice paddies and the sudden smell of blood, but he knows Sean doesn’t sleep well either, and for some reason that helps. Of the four of them, he and Sean have definitely fucked up the most, and coming back now is like coming full circle. Only now Armando’s here too.

He doesn’t spend a minute alone if he can help it. He and Sean still have their rough edges, but it’s getting better. They’re finding their rhythm again, working together to clean the outhouses and clear the gardens. Armando and Hank join them, both of them shouldering through thick vines with ease while Alex and Sean hang back and load the debris into wheelbarrows. They wash dirt and bugs out of their hair and clothes every evening, and take turns cooking.

Charles is full of ideas for the school, enthusiasm stoked by clearing out his records and going through the files. They talk together over supper each evening, Armando bringing new ideas and a new skillset to their little team. He’s not a brainiac like Hank and the professor, but he’s smarter than Alex and Sean, who share wry looks over the table – they’re used to being sidelined when it comes to intelligence.

He’s used to living like he could die the next day, and he has to force himself to tread carefully, finding his feet again. He apologises to Hank for leaving him, and Hank smiles easier after that, though he’s still more sarcastic and dry than he used to be. Sean bumps their shoulders together and tells jokes and stories, though sometimes Alex catches him staring into space with an unreadable expression. They’re all keeping the worst from each other, it seems. They’ve all changed.

Armando’s laughter breaks the tension where it might solidify and trap them. Alex is falling in love more every day, something fluttering in his chest when Armando smiles at him, when Armando teases Sean, gushes with Hank over something technical. He misses the old ease of going up to the attic and pulling Sean against him, leaning up to kiss Hank.

Sean used to talk a lot about the itch he’d get for physical love. Alex gets it now. He wriggles against the sheets of his bed, hugs his pillow to his chest, jerks off with his imagination providing memories of Sean and Hank, and the possibility of what Armando would look like in situations like that. What sort of noises he’d make. Whether he’d say their names.

Alex’s name.

Fuck it, their names.

“I’m greedier than I used to be,” he tells Hank over breakfast, wolfing down eggs and toast and bacon. Vietnam rations are still a close memory, and if it weren’t for the work he’s putting into clearing the mansion, he’d be putting on a lot of weight.

Hank in the garden, Sean and Armando clearing the last of the unusable furniture from the rooms. Sean washing dishes, Hank buying groceries, Armando rearranging beds in the dorms. Hank’s blue fur in the corner of his eye, Armando’s slim body gyrating to the music he plays on the radio, Sean’s creaking laughter echoing down the stairs.

By all rights, he should be torn up and hemmed in. But he spins to follow their voices and hurries after them where they lead and he just wants them all to pause and come together for a moment. A measure of peace isn’t so much to ask, is it?

Alex is used to ignoring his own stupid ideas. But this one keeps coming back.

 

Sean’s _missed_ flying. He’s out of practice and his shoulders ache like hell, but it’s bliss to soar up high and freefall back down, his favourite pastime. Darwin whoops and cheers from the roof, and his open admiration is unfamiliar and warming.

In secret, they fly together. Darwin’s mutation means that even if he falls from a great height, he’ll survive without a scratch, and once up in the air, his weight shrinks to almost nothing. They tie Darwin to him around the waist and chest, lock their legs together, and fly. When they freefall, Sean wraps his arms around Darwin and holds him tight, keeping him safe. His screams don’t burst Darwin’s eardrums – his ears adapt to protect themselves.

This is something only they can share.

Drunk up on the roof one night, Sean shatters the empty bottles with small, directed shrieks. When the door opens, he’s expecting Hank, but it’s Darwin who emerges and comes to sit next to him. “Couldn’t sleep either, huh?”

“What woke you up?” Sean slurs, trying not to sway. At least the mess of broken glass doesn’t show how many bottles he’s had.

“I keep dreaming about dying.” The words roll off Darwin’s tongue so casually. Sean remembers Shaw feeding Darwin the red light of Alex’s energy blast and shudders.

“That sucks.”

“What about you?” Darwin bumps their shoulders together, his skinnier than Sean’s.

Sean shakes his head, and keeps shaking it for a few seconds, enjoying the sensation and marvelling at how _heavy_ heads are. He’s not ready to tell anyone that he wakes up in terror at least once every two weeks from nightmares of what might be memories or what might be his fevered imagination working overtime to fill the gap where the night of his rape is. “Canada,” he says finally, and offers Darwin his beer. Darwin takes a gulp and hands it back. “I wish I could hate you,” Sean mumbles. “It’d make things easier.”

“I’m glad you don’t hate me, if that helps.”

Sean just sighs and leans his head on Darwin’s shoulder. “How old’re you?”

Darwin leans back on the heels of his hands. “If we’re counting those eleven years I spent as a cosmic blank, I’m thirty two. If not, I’m twenty one.”

“That’s so _weird_.” Darwin’s so warm, and so…funny, and nice. But Sean can’t make a move, because Darwin’s with Alex. Or at least will be if he isn’t yet. He _can’t_. “M’real glad y’re alive.”

“I’m glad you’re alive too.” Darwin’s arm comes up, hand settling on Sean’s shoulder, elbow against his spine. So warm. Sean nuzzles his shoulder and sighs.

“M’gonna fall asleep on you.”

“We should go inside then.”

“You smell great.”

Darwin laughs and moves, pulling Sean up with him. “Yeah okay, time to go in.”

“S’rry.” Sean leans into him as they go very slowly down the stairs into the attic. “Shouldn’t’ve said that…”

“It’s okay.”

“Do you love Alex?” Sean shouldn’t be talking, but there goes his mouth, running right ahead of his brain. “You should. Alex is great. Hank is _great_. I love ‘em. Y’know who else is great? _You’re_ great. D’you love…shit, I should…fuck…” He pulls away from Darwin and collapses on the little couch, everything spinning around him. “Forget I said anything, kay? F’rget it. Sorry, m’sorry…God, I always do this, why do I always do this…”

When he wakes up in the morning, he remembers Darwin with a bucket, stroking his hair and talking to him. He doesn’t remember what he was saying, but he remembers the tone of his voice. Kind and soft and low.

“No problem,” Darwin smiles when Sean goes to thank him, finding him in the garden trying to get the lawn mower to work. “It’s not like I was gonna leave you alone.”

“You could’ve.”

Darwin rolls his eyes and pulls Sean into a hug he wasn’t expecting. “That’s not the way I do things.”

“How do you do things?” Sean squints as Darwin pulls back and shrugs.

“I don’t know. My way, I guess.”

Sean steels himself before leaning forward and kissing his cheek. “Thanks.” He leaves quickly, hurrying back inside with cheeks burning.

 

Armando finishes his drink and puts the bottle down on the attic floor, looking around at the others. Alex is in The Armchair this time, and Sean’s sharing his couch with Hank, combing his fingers through blue fur. Hank can’t purr, but he makes a growly humming noise every now and then, eyes half-closed in pleasure. This would be easier if Armando was tipsy like they are, but his body seems to process alcohol too fast for him to get drunk. Hank tells him it’s because alcohol is technically poisonous.

Sean had been on the floor between Alex’s legs when they started their thing. If he was telling the truth, they were all halfway to drunk, and he just turned around and went for it. Armando takes a deep breath and lets it out. He can’t imagine risking everything like that.

“You’re like a great big cat,” Alex smirks, looking at Hank, who flips him off.

“I have magic fingers, remember?” Sean croaks, hoarse from smoking. Alex flashes a nervous glance at Armando before looking down.

“Darwin already knows,” Hank mutters, eyelids fluttering. “You don’t have to be such a prude about it.” Sean scratches his shoulders and Hank growls, shivering. “Right there, that’s perfect.”

Sean grins, obliging. “Bossy.”

“I’m not.” Alex looks at Armando again, a quick look before he glares at the other two. “You just don’t need to bring it up every two seconds.”

“I don’t mind.” Armando stretches his leg out and nudges Alex’s thigh with the toe of his shoe, waiting for him to meet his eyes properly. “Really.”

Alex frowns, mystified. “Why not?”

Alex would be – he’d be possessive and cold, and Armando grins, because he can tell that from the tone of Alex’s voice and the line of his shoulders. “Because it sounds like you guys had a good time. Why would I begrudge you that? Would it have been different if I’d been there?”

“You could’ve joined in,” Sean mutters, smirking when Alex gives him a hard look. Armando couldn’t have wished for a better opening if he’d scripted it, and he spreads his palms.

“I’m here now.”

They fall silent, staring at him. Hank sits up, and something in Armando’s chest shrivels. He’s stepped over the line, pushed the boundaries too hard. They’ve got years on him, whole years of being together and knowing each other. What right does he have to break in on that and demand entry?

“You’re serious.” Hank doesn’t sound angry. More surprised. Armando makes himself nod.

“Why wouldn’t I be? Obviously I don’t wanna…” He gestures with his hands, trying to smile. “Impose, y’know? Feel free to ignore me.”

They exchange looks he tries to read. Alex is the only one he can really get a handle on – his body language and expression say, _could we? Do you want to? Can we? Do you mind? Is this okay?_ Darwin wants to tell him it is, but keeps quiet. He’s made his proposition. It’s up to them now.

“Have you even kissed Alex yet?” Sean asks after a few seconds, one eyebrow raised. Armando shrugs.

“Does that matter?”

“Matters to me,” Alex mutters, and Hank rolls his eyes.

“You two are morons.”

“I’m…” Armando looks between Alex and the other two. “…still finding my feet here.”

Sean’s the one who meets his eyes squarely. “Can I kiss you?” Armando nods, breath hitching for a second as Sean gets up and crosses the space between them with one long stride. He puts his hands on the arms of Armando’s chair and leans down without any hesitation, and Armando tilts his head up to receive the kiss, eyes falling shut.

Sean’s lips are rough and dry from all his flying, and his mouth tastes of beer and smoke. Armando arches into it and they change the angle, Sean tilting his head the other way. This is better, this is perfect. Sean turns gentle, one of his hands sliding up Armando’s arm to his shoulder and spreading fingers against his neck. Armando’s hands wander, one finding the hand Sean’s left on the chair and twining their fingers, the other skidding down his side. He hasn’t been kissed like this for a long time.

When they part, the sound of kissing continues, and they both look to see that Hank is holding Alex against his chest, pressing little kisses to his face. Sean steps back and pulls Armando up with him, taking him over to them. He holds Alex’s gaze the whole time, knowing if he looks away he’ll never be able to look up again.

“Are you sure?” Hank asks, the only one really hesitating. Sean kisses Armando’s neck, curls brushing against his jaw, and he shivers as he nods.

“I’m sure.”

Alex surges forward to kiss him, and there’s no pause to fit themselves together, no awkwardness. Armando wraps his arms around Alex and Alex drags him as close as they can get. Sean laughs and keeps kissing Armando’s neck, and Hank’s arm settles around his waist. They stand together in a sort of circle for a while, till Sean spins and falls back against Hank, who holds him up and murmurs something in his ear that makes them both smile.

Armando can’t let go of Alex. They’ve been moving towards this for so long, it’s a relief to have finally reached the point of convergence. Alex can’t stop smiling, one arm around him and the other around Hank’s shoulders. Sean’s fingers on Armando’s jaw turn his head for another kiss, and he smiles, the last lines of tension draining from his shoulders.

When they come down for supper the next evening, Charles rolls his eyes and says, “Finally.”

 

It’s almost a week later that Hank finally kisses Darwin. That first evening in the attic hadn’t quite seemed right – Hank had been preoccupied anyway, worried that everything would blow up in their faces. So far though, everything’s going smoothly, and now Darwin’s sitting on the table in his lab with his long fingers in Hank’s hair, the two of them kissing slowly.

They’re on their own, and Hank’s not on edge, not freaking out. Darwin knows his limits, same as the other two, and Hank trusts him. It’d be impossible not to. Darwin’s a _good_ kisser – Hank can understand why Sean and Alex have been melting to putty under his mouth. He’s not sloppy, very controlled, a quick study when it comes to categorising what Hank likes.

Hank’s usually the most level-headed when it comes to kissing, quite content to do nothing but kiss and touch (over clothing) for hours on end. He’s used to driving Sean and Alex to desperation, but Darwin’s matching him, and it’s amazing. Hank could _purr_.

It occurs to him that he, Sean, and Alex are technically about ten years older than Darwin now, and though it shows in the gaps in Darwin’s knowledge (names he doesn’t recognise, phrases that don’t mean anything to him, words that sit a little wrong in his mouth because he hasn’t had years of speaking them over and over to accustom himself to their shape and sound), it doesn’t _feel_ like it most of the time.

Though maybe that’s just Hank – he’s barely left the mansion since Cuba. Logan’s sudden appearance and their adventures in Paris and Washington are the most exciting thing that’s happened to him for years.

None of it matters right now. Darwin’s legs are tight around his waist, one arm heavy around his shoulders while the other slides up and down his back, something Hank’s seen him do to Sean and Alex too. “You like backs?” he murmurs between kisses, and opens his eyes enough to see Darwin’s eyes crinkle.

“I like the way the spine curves. Feels nice, y’know?”

Hank drags a palm down Darwin’s back and smiles when he arches it. “It does feel nice.”

“Told you.” Darwin kisses him again, smug and certain, and Hank makes a little contented sound into his mouth. He’s had his doubts before now, but this is what convinces him that they can all do this. They can balance each other out and be better together than they would be apart. It’s different to what he had before with Sean and Alex, but it’s not worse – it’s just evolved. A natural progression of their relationship from one level to another.

Hank kisses Darwin till their mouths are dry and their voices come out hoarse, and they laugh at themselves and each other and go upstairs to get drinks. With the window open, they can hear Sean and Alex somewhere nearby, teasing each other as they put the finishing touches to the gardens. In a week’s time, they’ll start finding new students, and the mansion will be truly alive once more.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this, please consider [buying me a coffee!](https://ko-fi.com/A221HQ9) <3


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